We can create a current international management personnel of nightmares:
Head coach: Gautam Gambhir
Head of selectors: Aqib Javed
Captain and post-match party organiser: Harry Brook
Director of golf: Rob Key
Physio: Imam-ul-Haq
Imran Khan once mentioned a story of a family in Baluchistan who was forced to leave their fully disabled son behind while fleeing the famine. This story was later depicted in a movie. Most chilling scene ever seen in Pakistani cinema. So It happens (rarely)
Outstanding work, @MumbaiPolice! 👏 You’ve once again given us a live demonstration of how the VIP culture works, and how being a commoner is apparently a punishable offence.🥵
Two Indias. Two sets of rules. One glorious VIP culture!
In four separate first-class matches Zaheer Abbas made a double century and a century, and finished all eight of those innings not out. Nobody else in the history of the game has managed it once. Sunil Gavaskar wrote a book about the cricketers he idolised, and Zaheer Abbas is in it. So how is his name missing from every conversation about the past greats?
The records, skills, stories and legacy of Zaheer Abbas are pretty incredible, and going through them properly makes the omission harder and harder to explain.
What were the records he held? He scored two centuries in the same first-class match on eight occasions, which is still the world record, and in four of those he made a double hundred and a hundred, unbeaten in every one of the eight innings. He is the only Asian batsman ever to reach 100 first-class centuries, finishing with 108 hundreds and 158 fifties, and he and Geoffrey Boycott are the only two men to bring up that hundredth century in a Test match. He averaged 87 against India across 19 Tests, with six hundreds. And Zaheer was a pioneer of aggressive white-ball batting decades before the term existed: across 62 ODIs from 1974 to 1985 he struck at 84.80, and among every player on earth with 1,000-plus ODI runs in that window, only two scored faster, Viv Richards and Kapil Dev.
What were his skills? A forward defensive stroke that could run away to the boundary, for a start. (Carl Hooper had the same gift a generation later, and nowhere near the defence to go with it.) ESPNcricinfo described Zaheer going onto the back foot and the front foot with equal facility, sometimes moving from backward to forward during the course of a single stroke, and still sending the ball crashing to the fence. The powerful forearms let him hit the ball out of the ground when he wanted to, but the method was always precision and timing rather than muscle. And he did all of it in spectacles, slightly built, without ever once resorting to force.
What was his legacy? The one man who rated him highly enough to write it down was Sunil Gavaskar. That book, Idols, is about the cricketers Gavaskar most admired, and Zaheer sits in it alongside Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Viv Richards, Imran Khan, Javed Miandad and Bishan Bedi. Men who faced him, or watched him from twenty-two yards, understood exactly what they were looking at. His own era never had any doubt about him. It is only the lists written afterwards that lost him.
The numbers, the records and the stories all put Zaheer Abbas exactly where his contemporaries always did, which is among the very best who ever played.
They called you the Asian Bradman for a reason, Zed. Somebody should tell the lists.
Totally agree with you Yousaf Bhai. Babar is not a great batter, in fact he is a mediocre player with good marketing team and outstanding social media PR team.
The truth is, he is selfish & greedy. He lacks leadership & courage, extremely timid & coward
STEVE SMITH - TEST CAREER 🥶
Even 100 Joe Roots couldn’t match Steve Smith’s aura in Test cricket. ☠️
Test Career: 123 Tests | 10,763 runs | 56.05 average | 37 centuries
End of 2019: 72 Tests | 7,164 runs | 62.84 avg
⭐ Peak (2014–17) → 5,004 runs at 75.82. ⭐
Modern Test cricket has one final boss: Steve Smith. 🐐 🤍
Nobody comes close.
Standing quietly in a corner of the metro with Earbuds on, a trolley bag beside him, glasses in his pocket and absolutely no VIP attitude
At first glance, 99% of people would think—Just another teacher or private-sector employee
But wait… you’ll be shocked to know who he actually is
This is former Indian fast bowler Javagal Srinath
A legend with 300+ ODI wickets, and currently an ICC match referee.
Yet there he was, travelling in the Bengaluru Metro just like any ordinary passenger. No security drama. No superstar attitude. No VIP show-off.
Being famous is easy. Staying grounded after achieving everything is the real greatness🇮🇳
Respect for this incredible simplicity